There are many reasons why a woman falls
to the floor. An optimist surely imagines
lovemaking, or the uncontrollable writhing

of modern dance that sweeps across the stage,
not a harsh plunge onto hardwood, the tumble
so sudden one thinks the old furniture

has slipped, crashed, cracked the tile.
Let’s work backward. She is lying there
screaming her husband’s name. The right

tube gave up, gave out
like an old rubber tire does after much
wear. All it needed was a nail. All it took

was an embryo to get stuck along its path,
the pressure unbearable, and the day before
no increased human chorionic gonadotropin,

though twenty days of bleeding while
going back and forth to the hardware store
to mend the fixer-upper, same age as her,

fallen siding, withered eaves,
should have been the obvious sign.
So, she is lying there and the husband

rushes her to the emergency room
and she does not die as the doctor
said she would have had she not signed

the paperwork. When she wakes
she discovers the tube is gone,
couldn’t be saved. On the television

an old black and white with wagons,
women in ankle-length skirts, poke
bonnets almost like a trap for hair,

boots full of dust, their hands rough
as pumice stone. And if these
settlers fell to the floor, she wonders,

who would come, who would hear them
and realize those long aprons had become
flags fluttering at the cabin door?

Poets

Lory Bedikian